Trying to reach and inspire the alienated youth, Sushi, Five Minutes Peace, especially the tempura rolls, Dark Belgian Beers that resemble a goldfish bowl when served to you after licking a salt lick. A musical device to alter input and output. Reading whatever I can get my hands on, trying to find time to read, the procrastination of grades, working in a building without windows, but small portholes where you can pretend you are out at sea and its the end of the world, hiding in general, pissing off the uninformed, making bendy sculptures with paper clips. Lecturing students on the importance of putting things back where they found them and in the order that they found them in. Sitting around a table on Thursday Nights for Five Hours Listening to People Read the Stories of Their Lives. Researching, tracking down and wondering about old friends on MySpace. Writing, Editing, More Editing, Rewrites, Editing, Rough Drafts for Five Minutes, then More Editing. Making lists and crossing them off, and wishing I hadn't left it at home. Watching three cats fight over a cardboard box in the living room. Falling down while cross-country skiing, having parts fall off of my bicycle while biking across MLK Blvd. Wondering what I will be like at age forty. Thinking about how forty is coming up. Wondering when exactly I will need bi-focles. Listening to music that doesnt make me feel old, but still inspires me. Peridontal Gum Disease. Staring at walls while attempting various forms of prose. Procrastination of grades. Lesson Plans, Making music in my head that doesn't know how to jump down on paper or jump out at me sometimes.Trying to be a good teacher. Sitting up at nights, wondering why a student won't do the work.Waiting for the sun to shine.Class time spent in front of a roomful of students, trying to find the right words to inspire them.Ungrateful Bastards.Incredulous cheapskates. People that have to research everything they buy, fifteen magazines strewn across their room, and thats all they can think about, and they end up buying the same thing everyone else has.Greed over toys, embarrassing public displays of affection. Taking a chance and failing.Parsing the billions and billions of music uploaded to the web everyday.Waking up at seven AM on weekends, blowing nose every god damned two minutes.
I'd like to walk on a beach and find a broken bottle, with a note inscribed inside of it from 1912. I want the author of this note to somehow be related to me, and to inform me that my entire family were all card-carrying members of the Communist Party, and I would like to meet the person who encouraged this in them, who encouraged them to look deep inside of their collective malaise and find courage out of disparity.I'd like to wake up one day and discover that all of my thoughts are progressive, that in thinking the way I do will one day lead me towards a great discovery that will revolutionize the way we look at our birth marks in the morning.A kayak and a long, calm river.People willing to spend some time to figure out all this not-knowing.
08/16/2007
Summer's Twilight
Okkervill River - The Stage Names
Super Furry Animals - Hey Venus!
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Rogue Wave - Asleep at Heaven's Gate
Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
Joy Division - Substance
Recent Viewings:
24 Hour Party People Tony Wilson, R.I.P.
Say Anything (Still Great!)
Wall Street
Zodiac
Stranger Than Fiction
The Prestige
Last King of Scotland
Pan's Labyrinth
Volver
Notes on a Scandal
Babel
Transamerica
The Departed
DiG!
The People vs. John Lennon
Bad Education
Tarnation
Made In Sheffield
Be Here to Love Me
Bukowski: Born Into This
The Matador
Brick
Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
The Chorus
Talk To Her
The Science of Sleep
State of Grace
Live Flesh
Weeds,Big Love,Rome,The Wire, Sopranos (R.I.P.), Six Feet Under (R.I.P.) Rome, The West Wing (R.I.P.) Documentaries on PBS, Cable Access!!!!, Spanish Soap Operas, Simpsons, Seinfeld re-runs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 'Knowing Me Knowing You' with Alan Partridge, I'm Alan Partridge, Scrubs
Recent Reads:
Edisto Revisited Padgett Powell
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City Nick Flynn
Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon
Edisto Padgett Powell
Jernigan David Gates
In the City of Shy Hunters Tom Spanbauer
White Teeth Zadie Smith
Best American Short Stories 2006
Best American Non-Required Reading 2006
McSweeney's Numbers 16,17,18,19,20 & 21
Lanark Alisdair Gray
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
Now is the Hour Tom Spanbauer
Here they Come - Yannick Murphy
Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon - Tom Spanbauer
The Children's Hospital - Chris Adrian
Core - Kassten Alonso
What is the What - Dave Eggers
Clown Girl - Monica Drake
The Stories of Breece DJ Pancake - Breece DJ Pancake
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Dave Eggers
Peter O' Toole
Padgett Powell
Peter Jernigan
Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.
Louis Armstrong (the trumpet player, not the overweight comedian)
Jon Stewart
Stewart Henderson
Penny Youngman (the guy who says take my wife please)
Cookie Puss
Milton Berle
Bob Dylan
The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
Fish, in general.
Spike Lee
Paul Weller
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Lenny Bruce
BILL HICKS
David Sedaris
Henry Miller
Tom Spanbauer
Lagunitas Brewing Company
Charles Bukowski
David Brent
Alan Partridge
Steve Coogan
Pedro Almodovar